During a town hall on Monday, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy reacted to a mother who lost two sons to gun violence in Cincinnati, Ohio.
00:00Thank you. My name is Felicia Zimmerman. I'm 49. I'm a lifelong resident of the city.
00:10I've had two teenage sons shot and killed in the city of Cincinnati.
00:15My son Bubba was killed in 2017. The detectives didn't pursue his killer.
00:22Despite considerable evidence, including a confession by way of rap video.
00:31My son Christopher was shot in the thigh when he was 11 and survived.
00:35The police never caught who shot him then.
00:38Then in 2021, soon after turning 17, he was shot and robbed.
00:43There were four young men involved.
00:45The shooter was fresh out of juvenile jail for shooting and paralyzing someone.
00:50He received 18 to 23 years and will be out before he's my age.
00:59There were also two brothers involved.
01:02One was the spotter and one physically attacked my son.
01:05Both received less than five years.
01:08The driver wasn't even charged.
01:11I was able to look up the criminal history of two of the fathers of those men that killed my son Christopher.
01:19And their rap sheets were a mile long.
01:23A cycle of crimes committed with little to no consequences.
01:27And it's no wonder why the cycle continued through their children.
01:31For four years, my husband and I showed up to every hearing.
01:35Regardless of how of its importance, we begged the prosecutor and the judge for stricter penalties.
01:41And her cries were ignored.
01:43The system is broken from the bottom to the top.
01:48And I'm here tonight in search of solutions so no one else has to get up here and say what I've just said.
01:54Thank you for sharing your story.
02:03That's unconscionable.
02:05As a mother, I'm a father of two sons and we're expecting a daughter early next year.
02:10And I have to tell you, as a parent, there's nothing that hurts my heart more than hearing you face that loss.
02:18Not once, but twice.
02:21I'm sorry.
02:23And I know you've heard that.
02:24And you don't need to hear it again.
02:25You need to see action.
02:26But what I will tell you is there's a million reasons why I can tell you why a governor can't be somebody that's a state and local problem.
02:33Enough.
02:34At the end of the day, you kick the ball, blame somebody else.
02:37You talk to the police, you blame the police.
02:39The police blames the judge.
02:40The judge blames the backdrop of politics.
02:43And then the state government, you go to them, they blame the municipalities.
02:45Enough.
02:47I'll give you this word, all right?
02:49Two years from now, a year and a half from now, I view you as holding me accountable.
02:55Ultimately, if it's in this state, if it's in a city of this state, ultimately I don't care.
03:00We can talk about how we can work with localities, what kind of pressure we're able to apply.
03:04There's things we can do.
03:06But starting in January of 2027, all I can tell you until then is we're sorry.
03:10And starting then, hold me accountable to make sure that we're actually finally ending this wave of violent crime so no other mother has to suffer what you have.
03:19And I want to thank you again for being here and sharing your story.
03:22Thank you very much.
03:23I appreciate it.
03:28I just want to thank you for having the courage to come forth with your story.
03:34I'm a father of five children, lost my life to breast cancer, but never could imagine the loss of a child.
03:43It's a different level.
03:45And so we extend our deepest condolences.
03:47And the prevention around it is what makes it so painful.
03:52There's a woman in our community by the name of Hope Dudley.
03:55If you don't know who Hope Dudley is, you should know who Hope Dudley is.
04:00She's a woman like an abolitionist for women and families like you, who's been working in Hamilton County and the city of Cincinnati and fighting for victims to get justice.
04:11There's one thing that she's been asking for, and I hope Hope Dudley hears me putting a voice to her name.
04:17She's been asking to place cards of people who have committed crimes into all of our Hamilton County jail systems so that as they're playing cards, somebody might say, this is a cold case and I want to find out something about it and I'm going to cooperate.
04:37Do you know that Hamilton County will not allow those cards in the jail system?
04:43This was a major change because the cards were there and now they're gone.
04:50These are the basic steps when we talk about like solutions that would make Hope Dudley and all the women that she represents and their families and their children on these cold cases.
05:02Meaning we need more detectives that are finding out who did what when and hold those people accountable.
05:08Mothers and families are still grieving like their murder happened yesterday.
05:15And we have a system that we're not funding to make sure that those families get the justice.
05:22And it's not about black.
05:24It's not about white.
05:25It's not about Asian Indian.
05:27It's not about Latino.
05:28This is about getting justice for our families, for people who have taken their loved ones away.
05:35So I will stand, work with Vivek, anything that he needs to support this.
05:41But to share with you a step we can do right now is demand that Hope Dudley gets those cards into the system that she's been asking for for the last two years.
Be the first to comment